In this paper, comparative study of two approaches, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Lambda Iteration method (LIM) have been used to provide the solution of the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem. The ELD problem is defined as to minimize the total operating cost of a power system while meeting the total load plus transmission losses within generation limits. GA and LIM have been used individually for solving two cases, first is three generator test system and second is ten generator test system. The results are compared which reveals that GA can provide more accurate results with fast convergence characteristics and is superior to LIM.